An Interview with Eliott Glinn

3:56 Luke F. Walton What's good everybody? This is Scoobert Doobert. Welcome back to Love Music More. I'm joined with Eliott Glinn. What's up? How you doing?

4:03 Eliott Glinn Hey, buddy.

4:04 Luke F. Walton We're going to talk about mixing, creating a mode of mixes, being able to pull the best out of artists and, you know, releasing music that you can be proud of. So how are you doing Eliott? Let's dig into this.

4:17 Eliott Glinn Yeah, I'm doing really well. Thanks for having me on, man. I really appreciate it.

4:20 Luke F. Walton And yeah, hopefully you can share some wisdom,

4:22 Eliott Glinn some experience for people can take away and kind of see the other side of the glass and how mixed engineers or myself anyway kind of navigate this career and what I do.

4:33 Eliott Glinn I love mixing because it is to so many artists, it's kind of this thing that's like I give them my music and it comes out and now it sounds like a record and it's like, how did they get from it? from a to z um

4:45 Eliott Glinn Yeah. so i i just like to first kind of start off with how do you define mixing like what what is what is if somebody goes i don't know what they do i just send them files and it comes back a song like how would you define just a super zoomed out level kind of what you do

5:00 Eliott Glinn yeah i my kind of thing i always tell people is yeah artists and bands record their music whether it's at home or in a studio they send it to me and i just make it sound good um you would think that you know going into a studio and recording your song it should come out amazing straight away out of the microphone and but it's not there's a whole extra step that's where mixing comes in then mastering you know and it's just making all those individual tracks that you've slaved over and got as good as you can to translate across multiple different playback systems systems

5:27 Eliott Glinn make sure all the emotion and the intent that you have in the song is portrayed and that basically there's nothing in there which makes somebody go hang on that sounds a bit weird or that sounds a bit odd kind of a mix of job should be invisible to the end listener you know if you've done a good job people won't be sure you've done anything at all I think is a good way of putting it

5:46 Luke F. Walton I like that. I like that. And sometimes the way that I mix, too, is like. If there's ever any moment that snags me, it's not done yet, you know?

5:54 Eliott Glinn yeah that's it that's the kind of thing a lot of people when they first start out mixing they're like oh how do you know a mix is done or you know what's your process for finishing a song i don't know when it's when it's finished and that's exactly it it's like if i play it and sit back and listen and nothing waves its hand going hey sort me out then we're done um but you know on the same on the same side of that

6:15 Eliott Glinn You could you could keep going and going and going so there is a point where you have to be restrained and be like Okay, although I could end up tweaking for hours on end here, this is a point where the song is good and I should just leave it alone because I'm sure you'll have a similar thing where you just go down a rabbit hole and you can make things a lot worse that way.

6:33 Eliott Glinn So yeah, there's some restraint involved for sure. I like that it is endless and that that's also part of the reason why I find it such an interesting part of like what we do is that there's not necessarily always a right decision there's a right for the song decision and then there's also like you did too much decision. So it's

6:48 Eliott Glinn Yeah. an interesting navigation. And we were just talking about like illness before the pod and mixing is like another like it's like a humbling thing, especially in the beginning. But every every tune that you come to is like this is a new mountain to climb. This is a new challenge. You develop techniques, you develop skills, you develop your intuition, but you have to apply it like from the jump from zero yet again.

7:12 Eliott Glinn Yeah. Yeah, exactly. That's it. You can learn all the techniques you want. and you could think there's a formulaic way to to approach mixes and whilst you know you probably have a system that you how you approach and I'll have my own system there's no one way to to do it you know I could give you the same files that I mix and we'd have two completely different mixes and neither of them are right neither of them are better than each other they are my opinion your opinion the artist's opinion in those things and that's just such a joy about mixing it really for me the reason I kind of got into it was it

7:42 Eliott Glinn it was it marries the two you know a creative and a technical side that I really enjoy it's not purely technical it's not purely artistic it is a real mix of both and that's just a really a place that my kind of brain is happy to sit

7:55 Eliott Glinn Yeah in um you know I'm not in either camp completely I'm down the middle and that's where I find joy

8:00 Eliott Glinn I love that. So on that note, how did you get started? What kind of drew you to it? What was your first mix sound like?

8:08 Eliott Glinn oh okay well my first mix is terrible absolutely terrible and as everyone should be i'd be surprised if anyone um mixes something incredible from the outset but um i'm like a lot of mix engineers and a lot of engineers in general producers started doing the whole band thing when you're younger you know you pick up a guitar in your teen years start a band and think this is going to be awesome i'm going to be a rock star

8:29 Luke F. Walton Oh,

8:29 Eliott Glinn um

8:29 Luke F. Walton yeah.

8:29 Eliott Glinn and then you got to figure out a way to get your music out there so I started learning how to record at home had a really crappy old computer in a shed and I had my mum's old hi-fi speakers which are still got as speaker stands today that they're not plugged in

8:44 Eliott Glinn But those are my kind of speakers to learn on and you know everything was awful It sounded rubbish But just the joy of being able to have an idea in my head and play it and put it down and create something was really really cool to me And I think through that process I kind of enjoyed the whole recording side the whole trying to do producing and stuff I went to university for music production at Leeds Met in in England and it was a very broad very broad course So we did lots of different things like

9:10 Eliott Glinn production mixing recording Oh, awesome. there was other things like composing you know for film and things like that

9:17 Eliott Glinn it was very broad and I kind of left feeling like what the hell do I want to do I was no yeah I had even less idea going into you know leaving university than I did going in um I ended up getting an internship at a recording studio in London called the church studios which is Paul Leppworth's um studio he's you know recorded Adele and amazing other bands um and artists and that was amazing for me I was in there for two months basically every day unpaid but I was doing 10-12 hour days and I was like this is the coolest thing ever

9:45 Eliott Glinn ever for the first couple of weeks um Mm and -hmm. then after about two months of doing that i was like how do these guys you know do this job day

9:52 Eliott Glinn Yeah. in day out 12 hour days all the time don't kind of see their family don't see their friends that much and that kind of got me thinking like is this the route i want to go down um i don't know if it's a self-awareness thing i had or a kind of I don't know I just felt like I wanted more from life than just it to be my career I

10:09 Eliott Glinn Yeah. wanted to have a balance I wanted to think about the future and you know family and all that kind of stuff and so that's why I kind of started digging into mixing it's the thing I was I thought I was worse at as well at the time so I really invested in you know education and improving as a mix engineer and I grew to love it and I was like actually this is something I could do on my own time in the comfort of my own home you know still make music still be creative

10:31 Eliott Glinn but doing it how I want and not really having to deal with the kind of um social side of having people in the studio having to you know cater to other people's needs i could work by myself send it off to somebody get all the notes and then work on it again you know and that kind of again i think that's why it really resonates with me that just i could be a bit of a hermit with it get on with it but still be creative and then collaborate virtually so yeah that's kind of a long way long-winded way to say that's kind of how i ended up yeah being a mix engineer

10:59 Luke F. Walton I like it. I think that's really instructive. I mean, a lot of people when they find their ultimate.

11:04 Eliott Glinn ultimately like eventual career yeah they've they've tried a lot of different things especially in music because there's there's so many different hats you can wear and that's like my one of my buddies became a tour manager and it's because he was an artist and then he didn't really like the studio but he loved being on the road but he was a little bit more organized and didn't really like partying it's like boom you're a tour tour manager that's your that's your lane um and

11:27 Eliott Glinn Yeah, like on on my end i actually didn't love like always being on the road's for the same reasons i was like well

11:33 Luke F. Walton call okay i'm gonna miss another holiday with my family and it's like is this gonna be the rest of my life is like every

11:39 Eliott Glinn Yeah,

11:40 Luke F. Walton single important event i'm just gonna be gone on the road um at

11:44 Eliott Glinn yeah,

11:44 Luke F. Walton a hotel bar you know um it's and i'm sure it would be very different if i was playing my own music but like playing other people's music you know um still

11:52 Eliott Glinn of

11:52 Luke F. Walton fun but

11:53 Eliott Glinn course.

11:53 Luke F. Walton but anyway like like what you're saying mixing is a really unique blend of yeah you fill yourself up creatively but you also are able to set your own

12:02 Eliott Glinn your own hours. You can set, Yeah. you can temper your own creative inputs and outputs in really cool ways. But it's very difficult. And so that's kind of the challenge. I'd love to dig into a few parts of kind of that journey before we go deeper

12:17 Eliott Glinn Yeah. into mixing. Being an intern. I know that a lot of people like I see it on the audio engineer subreddit and stuff like that. They think like, okay, that's my path. I

12:26 Eliott Glinn Yeah. go, I get an internship with a big name, you know, and they're a big artist, and then it advances.

12:35 Eliott Glinn could you could you spread a little bit of like what that really looks like what is your what is your day like obviously the long hours but it's so easy to be like i can handle long hours i'm in my 20s like whatever you know yeah

12:46 Eliott Glinn yeah yeah it's so true i think a lot of people myself included thought this is the way you do it and that and it was the way you did it for decades it was you go to the studio you become a t-boy and you stay there for a couple years and then if you're lucky you get to engine you know assistant engineer because some guy didn't show up that of that day and

13:03 Eliott Glinn Yeah. if you're lucky you did a good job and it was that whole thing that we'd all heard before so i was like this is what i need to do um

13:09 Eliott Glinn left university managed to get that internship and I think I was only meant to be there for a week or two and obviously in a studio that amazing and with a producer that amazing I was like can I just stay and I just said at the end of each week can I come back next week and they were like yeah sure because they weren't paying me and I was just another guy you know to help out and do things and on the weekends I was working in a pub as well so I was doing 10 hour days Saturday Sunday you know just to get the money

13:35 Eliott Glinn Right. um but yeah the non-glamorous side of it was Yeah. i was living in west london it took an hour and a half to get to the studio every day um

13:42 Eliott Glinn Wow. it took an hour and a half to get back and i i had to leave the studio at like nine ten o'clock if i wanted to get the last tube home um to get home in time and one time i was like sod it i'm going to stay around um because it was a big session i was like i'm going to stay around and just show my face and do whatever i can and then i end up leaving at midnight having to get

14:02 Eliott Glinn two night buses to get back home it was like a three hour journey Oh my gosh. fell asleep fell asleep on one bus and missed my connecting one and you know so that's that's all the kind of stuff you have to think about on the outside of the studio um inside it was just a lot of standing around just waiting to be helpful you know not being in the way not kind of

14:25 Eliott Glinn I was basically just silent the whole time unless somebody asked for an opinion or they needed help doing something or they needed coffees or food or whatever I was that guy it was like cool it's lunchtime it's going to go what do you want you know from the shop and I'd go or what do you want from a sandwich place and

14:39 Eliott Glinn Yeah. that was essentially what it was but in that process obviously I got to be in the room experience how these people worked and kind of peer over the shoulder of the engineers he's tweaking this massive 84 channel Neve console and just you know I was drooping over all the gear yeah um

14:52 Eliott Glinn Yeah. but yeah it wasn't as glamorous as i think a lot of people hope it kind of is in studios and i'd say you know even for seasoned engineers it's not glamorous like we say it's 10 hour 12 hour days you don't stop until the artist is really happy um you know you're not on the kind of clock watching oh it's it's eight o'clock we'll go home now it was like until the song's done you're all there

15:13 Eliott Glinn Mm really um hmm. Mm and hmm. yeah it was just that whole side of it it was exciting and being there but after a couple of weeks i was like i'm drained and it's just i don't see myself doing this as a as a future career i really think you have to be a certain type of person to commit to that lifestyle

15:30 Eliott Glinn Yeah, and for sure. you have to really really want it and you have to really really love it much like touring musicians have to love what they do and you can't half arse that you can't half arse the studio life as well

15:40 Eliott Glinn I like that.

15:40 Luke F. Walton In terms of how you give an opinion in that kind of stakes, how do you go about like, they turn to you and go, what do you think of the reverb? like how

15:49 Eliott Glinn yeah

15:49 Luke F. Walton do you navigate that because i feel like some some young guns would just be like it's crap like throw on a plate like you got to do this how do

15:56 Eliott Glinn yeah

15:56 Luke F. Walton you subtly give the opinions so you stay in the studio and get called back the next day cool

16:00 Eliott Glinn i'm probably the complete opposite of that i'm far too diplomatic and nice and i'm like oh yeah sounds great cool done and just not not wanting to piss anyone off not wanting to step on any toes um and again i think that's probably why i quite like working in solitude and having you know my own time to work on things and if I need to express an idea or an issue with somebody I've got time to type it up or

16:20 Eliott Glinn Hmm. or leave a voice note or something it's not a face-to-face interaction I've always been kind of um against yeah I'm not very assertive so putting myself out there and giving my opinion I didn't always find too easy you know um so yeah if it was ever something like yeah what do you think of that I was like yeah cool sounds great you're the expert I'm the lowly tea boy um whereas you're right I think other people on the other hand would be more

16:42 Eliott Glinn or you know I want to show them I know Yes. what I'm talking about I want to show them that I'm amazing at this and then you could easily step on some toes piss the wrong person off and not be invited back so it's a really really hard gig to balance and get right yeah

16:56 Eliott Glinn Yeah. Especially with distress. I can only imagine just like. it's like you you you have to go back to the studio the next night after falling asleep on your night bus and

17:06 Eliott Glinn yeah uh and then like something goes wrong and you gotta stay you gotta stay yeah

17:10 Eliott Glinn completely exactly you got to stay calm and it's and it's always going to be the lowest person's fault as well in the studio like that again it seems to be the kind of ethos and mentality that people have like whoever was the lowest person and if they had an involvement it's their fault it's never going to be the top dog um and you know rightly or wrongly that is how it is

17:29 Eliott Glinn So yeah, you have to have a kind of a fortitude and an attitude of being like I'm in this for the long haul and if I eat enough shit then I'm going to get where I

17:37 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

17:37 Eliott Glinn want to be

17:37 Luke F. Walton I

17:38 Eliott Glinn So yeah I think that's the kind of that's the kind of person you have to be if you want to stick that out

17:43 Luke F. Walton like it I mean the the it's so weird hearing these stories because it feels like almost a bit of the 70s and 80s is still like in this little bubble that

17:52 Eliott Glinn yeah

17:53 Luke F. Walton it doesn't really exist that much in the music industry like most of us are recording ourselves at home or have homies and it's like the totally different vibe than that but then there's still this little bubble in the middle it feels like a time capsule it's

18:06 Eliott Glinn that's

18:07 Luke F. Walton wild yeah

18:07 Eliott Glinn exactly what it's like it is just this old the old guard kind of way and as much as people are doing different things and making amazing music now in our respective home studios and things like that you can do amazing things there's still that studio um etiquette and vibe that people want and i think labels assume is what is needed to make an album amazing um and

18:27 Luke F. Walton And what makes

18:28 Eliott Glinn as

18:28 Luke F. Walton them different?

18:29 Eliott Glinn Yeah, we're not a home studio thing. yeah We've got the ADA channel Neve. exactly like this is how you do it and this is you know this is the only way to make a record and I don't want to make it sound like the guys at the studio were amazing Paulette Wolf is amazing like all of that was they were great but the whole just I think it's the same in any studio you go to that is the expectation that you do these long hours you work as hard as you can and like you take as little you know take as little breaks as you kind of you

18:55 Eliott Glinn can um but yeah it's it's definitely a different way and i'm so glad that there is the opportunity for musicians and artists to make in home studios and i mean you're probably the same when we first started out in or you know recording audio at home and stuff the the quality of equipment wasn't there and it was just that is a lot different now the kind of apollos that you can get the microphones you get are incredible and that's all you need at home now to make a good record

19:20 Eliott Glinn Totally. It was like around.

19:23 Luke F. Walton 2014 2015 where i started to start being like oh okay this sounds good now like

19:28 Eliott Glinn Yeah.

19:29 Luke F. Walton where it's you know i got sound toys you know Yeah, something somewhere

19:32 Eliott Glinn yeah.

19:32 Luke F. Walton right around there it's like oh okay like i can saturate things and it like sounds like i'm running it into gear it's like all right and now we have a million tools but like it was it hasn't been that long

19:45 Eliott Glinn no that's no true yep actually it really hasn't and everything's getting cheaper and better and

19:48 Eliott Glinn totally yes the knowledge is out there now as well like 20 20 years ago you had to dive into like you say the forums and stuff and you'd get some crusty old guy yeah be like oh this is the only way that you can record an acoustic guitar and you're like oh crap okay i've

20:02 Eliott Glinn gotta got to get a listen new 87 to him no yeah yeah

20:05 Luke F. Walton there is so much crap on gear sluts of just um just yeah just nonsense but said so confidently and then a whole bunch of other posters that are all backing it up like i

20:14 Eliott Glinn Yeah.

20:14 Luke F. Walton guess i have to buy that really expensive neumann microphone otherwise it's impossible to record vocals

20:21 Eliott Glinn Yeah, they can't all be wrong, surely. So that must be the way to do it. Yeah. exactly it's on weird little hive mind but yeah i'm with you um I also want to ask, did some of that in-person studio experience, and also this would probably apply to your schooling, but help you with digitally modeled versions of the same gear, like getting on a Neve console or seeing the way that they were manipulating that or outboard gear or whatever, and then you see the virtual version,

20:50 Eliott Glinn does that pay dividends? I think it did in a way. I saw again how... how high level the high level productions were made and it was with a lot of expensive outboard gear and a lot of cool stuff interestingly because of the way the church studio is set up the Neve console is in the live room it's like one big

21:09 Eliott Glinn Whoa, room and they I have didn't it know that. yeah Oh wait, and they've no, got

21:12 Eliott Glinn I've seen pictures of this. I have. yeah you would have seen yeah and so they've got the cloud above the Neve console to kind of contain it but a lot of the time the engineer will be on headphones and he would actually pull up the UAD

21:23 Eliott Glinn um neve channel strip tweak it and headphones whilst they're playing and then apply it to the console after the fact so um it was a very cool way of seeing them utilize both both kind of um you know modeled and actual analog gear yeah

21:39 Eliott Glinn That's so cool. Yeah, I'm looking at the pictures. I have seen this before yeah it's

21:44 Eliott Glinn That's a really an incredible cool point, yeah. place and they've got below so that's on the second floor um below that they've got an ssl room with um i can't remember which model is but they've got the the osbergers speakers as well and it's and it's a much more modern kind of mixing room so they had the best of both worlds they had this really incredible space where you could record and you know everyone's in the same room together and it's a real vibe and then they had the more cleaner sterile

22:09 Eliott Glinn more up-to-date kind of studio below so it kind of catered for every um every artist that came through but yeah it was cool to see them just how they would use the gear in

22:19 Eliott Glinn Yeah. in the in their space I think around that time though is also where I've kind of swore off ever getting into outboard gear because I saw I was a guy taking recall notes you know and taking all the photos and helping them catalogue it all and i

22:33 Eliott Glinn Wait, was like man what yeah is that? Just in case somebody that might pass by somebody they're like what is recall now?

22:38 Eliott Glinn so when you're recording in a session you've got all your outboard gear you're setting everything up putting all the settings how you like and you record and i'll mix or whatever it's doing at the end of the day after the artist leaves you need to take a record of where all the settings were on that piece of gear because you might not be coming back in that studio tomorrow it might be somebody else who comes twiddles and changes everything again

22:59 Eliott Glinn so everything needs to be documented and captured so that when they come back to record or mix again in the same space they can set everything exactly how they had it before which is such a long-winded process and a very difficult thing you know a lot of the gear didn't have indented knobs so it was a real guessing game as to where you know you put your mark and stuff and that's kind of where I got the idea I just want to be in the box I don't want to faff around

23:25 Eliott Glinn and ever you know we we always hear again on the forums like oh you need the gear you need the outboard stuff to do great mixes and especially this is what was being kind of pushed 15 20 years ago um whereas now you know you've got big mixers like Andrew Sheps who's one of my my mixing idols he's just in the box on a pair of headphones you know and he makes amazing mixes so it's it's all about the knowledge not the gear but knowing how to use the gear and what is appropriate for different sound sources is a massive

23:52 Eliott Glinn massive part of being a mixed engineer and I think definitely seeing different tools being used in that aspect in a live situation did help me kind of internalize that and understand it a bit better.

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24:26 Luke F. Walton But the real tech is in these little tiny lossless earplugs. My favorite thing about it is, one, you can swap out any of the included tips. So depending on the size of your ear canal, we're all built different. You can get a nice, comfortable fit. But there's also this little lever on these adjustable versions that can go from 7 to 25 decibels of cutting.

24:46 Luke F. Walton So depending on if you're listening to new metal or jazz, you can just hit the little lever and adjust in real time. And I think that's really, really cool. You know, for the longest time, I was listening in those awful foam earplugs, and it makes the music sound like that.

25:00 Eliott Glinn it just cuts off all of those high frequencies um and so i was always tempted to sneak them out a little bit oh it's my favorite song no earplugs and you get hearing damage you have tinnitus after the show and then you come back you want to work in the studio and guess what your ears aren't right and that's why i love minuendo because you can just pop these in and have full full full fidelity with these lossless earplugs they're two different versions one is adjustable with the little lever and then this one is fixed

25:25 Luke F. Walton That's 17 decibels. So check out minuendo.com where you can search them on Amazon and find minnuendo earplugs today. Get cracking.

25:39 Eliott Glinn I love that. Great answer. Yeah. And it is a. it is hilarious especially with because you don't people just think oh okay like i used one thing and i set mine up like a guitar amp and you go yeah

25:50 Eliott Glinn Yeah, take a picture of the guitar amp and that's done it's like in the studio sometimes you route this thing into that thing into that thing into that thing and you got to keep track of this like permutation of this beast that you recreate because you have these patch bays and you

26:03 Eliott Glinn yeah, plug all of it needs to be noted down. Yeah

26:07 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

26:07 Eliott Glinn Yeah

26:07 Luke F. Walton and I've been to the Audio Engineering Society show in New York a couple times, and to try to solve that problem, they have these digitally controlled outboard gear where you can press a button.

26:19 Eliott Glinn yeah it just all the knobs but it also that also kind of feels like a little bit like a solution running after a problem where it's like why just do you really need to

26:28 Eliott Glinn yeah that literally that was my that was the final nail in the coffin for me as i i a few years ago i think it's probably about five years ago i was like oh maybe i should get like an outboard compressor for my mix bus that'd be really cool and i was like oh yeah but then you're gonna have to recall it every time you want to pull up a mix i was like okay maybe i'll get one of those ones that's digitally controlled by a plug-in

26:46 Eliott Glinn plugin so you know i'll do that i'll route the audio out and i was like but then i'm just tweaking a

26:50 Eliott Glinn Totally! plugin like so what's the point in having the box that costs two grand and and i think that was really where i just went that's it i like i don't want outboard gear because if the thing if the thing doesn't the box does something slightly different Is it better is or is it just slightly different

27:07 Eliott Glinn Mm in -hmm. my opinion is probably just slightly different others may disagree and think that they need the Apple gear to get their sound and that's fine I'm not here to argue their case but for me I can get the sound I'm looking for completely in the box.

27:20 Eliott Glinn Yes. I've got a really well kind of thought out template that I've been developing for years with certain choice pieces of plugins and things in certain places. So I know if I want a sound, I can reach for a certain plugin or a certain fader and push it up and it will do that for me.

27:35 Eliott Glinn Much like old studios were set up with tons of outboard gear and they would have things already patched in ready to go when they're mixing. I've kind of adopted that, but just strictly with plugins.

27:45 Luke F. Walton awesome i'd love to dig into that and on that point though with the with guitar my primary instrument um i've like i can spend a million dollars on pedals and i like pedals and i sometimes buy pedals and a million dollars on amps and i like amps and i have an amp but it's like if i buy stuff that's in the box i can use it on anything easily and having a guitar pedal and patching into that's fine it's i do that sometimes but it's like if i just get a

28:12 Eliott Glinn Cool bit of software it can translate across everything I do and Yeah, you it's flexible

28:17 Eliott Glinn can use it multiple times, whereas I use Distressors all the time in my mixing. Cool

28:22 Eliott Glinn I don't know how much they cost, but if I was to have a wall I need probably about... 10 20 to stressors in

28:29 Eliott Glinn Yes, one studio to to do what i do in the box and it's the same for you with your guitar pedals like okay i could buy that one pedal but i could only use it once on this one audio i can't use it across my mixer on these 10 different things so yeah it's a convenience thing at this point the sound doesn't matter anymore that or the sound quality is isn't an issue you know um

28:50 Eliott Glinn it's come every up to par, exactly yeah. it's come up to par now so um Yeah, I think for ease of use and recallability and just I can switch from one project to the next.

28:58 Eliott Glinn Mm-hmm. I can work for an hour, I think, all right, I'm losing this or I'm kind of not vibing with this, switch to another project and it takes me two minutes for

29:05 Eliott Glinn Yes. my computer to load, you know, that's it. And think about the value that you're getting from that, being able to put that down, pick this up, pick that back up, that already, that jump in audio quality rather than I have to grind it out and get to the end because I don't want to have to.

29:21 Luke F. Walton patch

29:21 Eliott Glinn yeah

29:21 Luke F. Walton everything again that that already is going to sound better than the outboard gear just the the human mental shift yeah yeah

29:29 Eliott Glinn exactly and you can be in that be in the right creative space and then when it when you feel like you're losing it you can stop and you can come back to it again when you feel like you're in the right creative space like you're saying otherwise we'll be having to force ourselves to finish the mix no matter what because i'm gonna have to recall this gear anyway so um

29:47 Eliott Glinn yeah it's just it's just a great time to be a mix engineer or just somebody creating music themselves in a home studio the quality of gear that's available in plug-in form is amazing so just it's it's not a barrier anymore to entry

30:01 Luke F. Walton I'd love to talk about templating and kind of the way that you're applying some of those classic studio techniques to the way that you build your sessions. First of all, what DAW do you prefer to mix in?

30:12 Eliott Glinn so i'm in logic um and i've always been in logic i Nice. think i started in cubase le that was the free thing i had in my old you

30:18 Eliott Glinn Yeah. know windows computer but as soon as when i went to university got a macbook pro got logic and i've been on it ever since um so yeah i've used studio one i've started dabbling with that a little bit more recently um

30:29 Eliott Glinn Cracking mix. which is cool it's got some cool um you know what you call it um quirks to it things that are quite helpful for mixing but yeah logic is like um it's like an extension of me at this point

30:39 Luke F. Walton Yes.

30:40 Eliott Glinn so yeah

30:41 Luke F. Walton I love that. In terms of the way that you kind of set up the session, has this been over time your template? Has this been over time you're adding things and kind of perfecting it?

30:50 Eliott Glinn yeah definitely it's been something that again i don't know when i first made a template it's probably like five or six years ago i made my first one um and i've just been tweaking it ever since it's like as i learn new new

31:01 Luke F. Walton Cool.

31:02 Eliott Glinn skills new tools come out i try things and if i find myself doing something mix after mix i'm like well i should just put this in my template then

31:09 Eliott Glinn Yeah. so i'll note of things as i go um or a mental note just being like i really liked how that sounded and i could just copy it from a project where it sounded great you know copy it straight in so all the settings are there everything's how it was on that as a good starting point

31:25 Eliott Glinn but yeah it's just been iterations um as i go and it's every month now i kind of update it or change it so i've kind of got it as a year i do the year then the month as as the kind of numbers and so i've got it all in a in an order and so whatever mix i'm working on i'll just open up my template drag and drop the files in and i don't have any processing on individual channels but i do have a lot of busing and that's how i kind of route things and there's plugins on the buses so i get that kind of

31:51 Eliott Glinn analog tape saturation things from certain plugins at certain points I've also got a lot of parallel channels because I like doing parallel processing as well but yeah there's not it's not a cookie cutter kind of template

32:02 Eliott Glinn Yeah. where I put audio in and it sounds amazing or I'm just doing the same processing as the last song it's just a starting point for me so I don't have to go through the whole arduous process of making aux tracks and routing audio in certain places I just drag the tracks where they need to be everything's good to go And so I can just get down to mixing as quick as possible.

32:20 Eliott Glinn I like it. So let's take, for example, just a standard arranging. You got bass, drums, synth, guitars, vocals. How are you organizing them? How is some of this stuff flowing, parallel processing? And could you give any tips to say somebody that's like, I've been mixing from scratch every time I want to build a template. Like, where do I even begin?

32:43 Eliott Glinn yeah that's a really good question i think for me i've again coming from that um working in the studio for a little bit and seeing how they set things up it was always drums drums on the left so in a door drums on the top drums bass i do drums bass sorry drums percussion bass keys acoustic guitars electric guitar synths strings and then vocals then backing vocals so

33:06 Eliott Glinn Yep. it all feeds down um and then i basically have all of those individual instrument groups going through their own bus there's a drum bus there's a percussion bus a bass bus etc um i don't typically do much processing or eqing on the bus it's normally on the individual track when i get to it but the bus is there in case i'm doing you know i just need it and it's just it's

33:28 Eliott Glinn Yeah. a way to collect audio on the way to the mix bus for me um then either way i've got it set up i've kind of had a hybridized session from um what's his name michael brower who's

33:39 Luke F. Walton Yes.

33:39 Eliott Glinn the guy who makes like coldplay and things like that his his whole browerized thing

33:43 Eliott Glinn Browerize. where he has yeah he had the three four different buses um and i like that kind of idea so i've got an all rhythm bus which takes my drums and my bass through them Then I've got all music, which is everything that isn't drums, bass and vocals.

33:57 Eliott Glinn I've got an all vocals, which takes the main vocal and the backing vocal through there. And then I've got all effects. And

34:03 Eliott Glinn All so effects. all Okay. four of those then Yes. feed into the mix bus. And that's where everything ends up going out. The reason I do that is just because on those all buses, as I call them, so the all rhythm, all music, all vocals, I can do kind of saturation or... you know console emulation things on there and it just gives a nice separation between certain elements I

34:26 Eliott Glinn Yes. can do that further down the chain you know on the individual buses as well but I like to do them up there and it's also I mean it's getting a bit in the weeds I also have a sidechain thing with soothe on the all music bus so

34:36 Eliott Glinn side chain thing with soothe on the all music bus so i put soup on my all music bus i side chain it to the lead vocal and

34:44 Luke F. Walton Mm-hmm.

34:44 Eliott Glinn so every time the lead vocal sings it's ducking the frequencies of the vocals out of the music bus so essentially it's kind of creating space for the vocal to sit on top of the music um and that's just something i've been doing recently which i love and that happens on like all mixes it's just in from the get-go so i always kind of hear it um but yeah that's generally how mine's set up and then within

35:06 Eliott Glinn each of those i kind of have different parallel chains so in my drums i've got three or four different parallel compressors and distortions and and reverbs so i can kind of blend them in as i want same with the bass i've got parallel distortion and a parallel chorus for some widening and then the vocals i've got parallel distortion parallel compression and parallel widening as well Nice.

35:28 Eliott Glinn um so again it's just on a fader down here i can push it up

35:31 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

35:31 Eliott Glinn and get it how i want and and move on um so hopefully that wasn't too

35:35 Luke F. Walton no

35:36 Eliott Glinn much informational points but yeah

35:37 Luke F. Walton yeah i think that's i think that's really good and it's i i like the way that you broke it down in terms of just organizational structure because i think you know even if a listener is not a mix engineer i think that just being able to demystify some of this and then also just think through like logically like what are you doing and how are you thinking about the music helps the producer helps the musician helps the mastering engineer where it's like

35:59 Luke F. Walton I am thinking of it really in those four tracks. That's

36:03 Eliott Glinn Yeah.

36:03 Luke F. Walton the highest level of... you know stuff that's going to make you dance the the music that the vocals are going to sit on the vocals themselves and then the ambience and

36:14 Eliott Glinn Yeah.

36:14 Luke F. Walton the effects the effects one is interesting because i do i do basically everything but the effects one so i would love to talk to you about that see if you can convince me to on my next mix to break that out is what's what's the purpose of that one is that just is that like in the same way to be able to create that separation or be able to like create more width with their like less

36:33 Eliott Glinn yeah

36:33 Luke F. Walton muddiness

36:33 Eliott Glinn yeah

36:33 Luke F. Walton or something like that yeah yeah

36:35 Eliott Glinn definitely so at first it was purely because i didn't want this was my i don't have ocd but my kind of wanting things to be clean i didn't want everything

36:43 Luke F. Walton yeah i

36:44 Eliott Glinn to go to its own bus and then the effects to go straight to the mix bus i wanted it to have its own thing

36:49 Luke F. Walton like it

36:49 Eliott Glinn as well but at that same point it's really handy to if a mix is feeling overly wet or overly ambient i can just pull that down a bit and it's like okay there's there's the space or

37:00 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

37:00 Eliott Glinn i can push it up or

37:01 Luke F. Walton I like it.

37:01 Eliott Glinn i can do things like carve out some muddiness if it's kind of there's way too much going on

37:08 Eliott Glinn So it's just a handy way of being able to first of all route audio to where it needs to go and it kind of my brain understands where things are going to. But yeah, you can absolutely process on that bus and dip out some mids if it's getting a bit muddy, add some stereo width on the highs if

37:25 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

37:25 Eliott Glinn you need to get a bit more shimmer, that kind of thing.

37:26 Luke F. Walton Yeah,

37:27 Eliott Glinn It's just I super handy to have that there.

37:29 Luke F. Walton like it. I think I've convinced.

37:31 Eliott Glinn Yeah, nice.

37:32 Luke F. Walton give

37:32 Eliott Glinn Give it it a go. Give it a go and you'll let me know if it's helped you out.

37:35 Luke F. Walton oh well i like it um yeah and i think it's i think it's interesting to like so you know people that that mix with their effects just on the bus or whatever like a or just like on an individual track like a snare reverb um you can only go down to one percent

37:52 Eliott Glinn Yeah,

37:52 Luke F. Walton With this, you can go below 1% because you just pull that fader down right to that sweet spot rather than being limited by however the plug-in company decided this was your minimum value.

38:03 Eliott Glinn yeah definitely and it's and there's there's a time and a place to put effects on a track if that's so like if you got a fender roads or something and you want it to be really spacey and washed out maybe then put your reverb directly on that but if you want to give it a bit of ambience why not have i've got at this point i think there's like 10 different reverbs and delays ready to go um you know starting from like a really small slap up to a really long quarter note delay and then a similar thing with reverbs and then i've got

38:31 Eliott Glinn same thing but just for vocals that's something I've started doing recently

38:34 Luke F. Walton Cool.

38:34 Eliott Glinn where

38:34 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

38:35 Eliott Glinn so because I want the vocals to have their own space and their own character and I don't want to accidentally change the reverb for the vocal and it's changing the guitar because I sent it to the same thing but just having them on faders as well I've got the fader bank in front of me and it's just so nice to be able to sit here without using the mouse and just sit and kind of close my eyes and push it up until it feels right and then being like

38:57 Eliott Glinn okay there it is and then and then let go instead of kind of being like is it 18.5 or 18.6 like it doesn't matter yeah oh

39:05 Luke F. Walton and that's such a good point too because like when yeah that there's this i mean i've got one too um you know one of the personas ones

39:12 Eliott Glinn nice yeah

39:12 Luke F. Walton just it's

39:12 Eliott Glinn yeah

39:12 Luke F. Walton only a solo fader but like i i like it too because for the same reason um when you're looking at the numbers it starts getting in your head a little bit of like i can i hear the 0.2 It might

39:24 Eliott Glinn yeah

39:24 Luke F. Walton be the right thing at the point too, but it's like, no, you're not supposed to even be thinking about that. That's part of the wisdom of the non-digital mixing.

39:31 Eliott Glinn completely this is something i was having a conversation with a friend with about yesterday and um we're just saying obviously we've got great tools like um fab filter pro q3

39:40 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

39:40 Eliott Glinn and and things like that which are great and they have so much they serve such a great purpose but at the same time it can be quite you're looking at going oh should i really be pulling out 12 db at this frequency it's like if i shut my eyes and just did it that's where it would end up so like what does it matter what i'm looking at and what the number is one of my favorite sayings from andrew scheps is like all that matters is what comes out of the speakers it doesn't matter how you get there or what was the processing involved or what numbers it's like it's irrelevant it's just

40:10 Eliott Glinn does it sound good and we could so easily get caught in that trap of like well i've been told i shouldn't pull out more than five db you know

40:17 Luke F. Walton Right.

40:17 Eliott Glinn any type of an eq or something and it's just like it's just nonsense um which is where things like the old graphic style eqs and new console things are just nice because you just the bands are already set for you so you go oh is it 330 or is it 450 or you know you just select it dip it out boost it up yeah cool that's where i want it and and kind of move on if you can save some mental bandwidth by just

40:41 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

40:41 Eliott Glinn making a decision and then moving on and you can always come back to it later because again that's the joys of working in the box and this stuff but um yeah trying to not be visual with things trying to just feel the music because it's an emotional thing and you know at the end of the day that's what we're here for we're not here to get the award for the correct number that we've compressed the vocal to um yeah

41:01 Luke F. Walton And no one's

41:01 Eliott Glinn it

41:01 Luke F. Walton going to

41:01 Eliott Glinn all sounds

41:01 Luke F. Walton know.

41:01 Eliott Glinn music better

41:02 Luke F. Walton They'll never know.

41:04 Eliott Glinn They'll never know. Yeah. Exactly. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter.

41:07 Luke F. Walton Yeah. And I really liked one of my things I loved coming up as a guitarist and then going into the audio is the way that guitar amps are for equalization is you got high, you got low, you got mid.

41:22 Eliott Glinn That's

41:22 Luke F. Walton There's not

41:23 Eliott Glinn it.

41:23 Luke F. Walton a lot going on. Does it need to be brighter? Yes.

41:27 Eliott Glinn yeah

41:27 Luke F. Walton Is it

41:27 Eliott Glinn that's

41:27 Luke F. Walton too much?

41:28 Eliott Glinn it yeah

41:28 Luke F. Walton Yes. Like it's just put yourself in that headspace, do that first, and then you can go in with the super surgical detailed digital tools and pull out that one little resonant frequency, you know, but yeah,

41:41 Eliott Glinn exactly yeah

41:42 Luke F. Walton start like a stupid guitarist and just go, all right.

41:45 Eliott Glinn bright i want more brightness cool i want more bass cool and like there's a foolproof way of doing it and and that you step away from the whole technical you know a granular way

41:56 Luke F. Walton Mm hmm.

41:56 Eliott Glinn of looking at things and it is the broader picture the musical thing like do i need more presence in this vocal or this guitar turn the highs up then i do

42:05 Luke F. Walton Yes,

42:05 Eliott Glinn sounding a bit muddy turn the mids down just yeah

42:09 Luke F. Walton exactly. On that point, I wanted to talk about kind of the educational content that you're trying to put out there for artists, for mixed engineers, what inspired you to do that? And kind of like, what is your goal spreading that education so that, you know, next generation and people that are coming up don't have to go through the gear slots difficulties

42:30 Eliott Glinn Yeah.

42:30 Luke F. Walton on the message boards that we did?

42:33 Eliott Glinn Yeah, definitely. So it kind of was born of necessity. Again,

42:37 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

42:37 Eliott Glinn when I first started mixing professionally, I wanted to attract the right audience and the right people. And I saw a lot of mix engineers making mixing content, thinking that that would attract the right kind of clients. whilst it can help you're you're basically more likely attracting other

42:52 Eliott Glinn Other mixing engineers engineers. to the content and so i was like i don't want to be another one of these guys who's just giving out mixing advice because there's a million of them out there far better than me what was what i didn't see happening much in the music space is people providing kind of motivation education for indie artists who are you're trying to make a career um out of this thing um whilst there are youtube channels that do it and other things i felt there was a gap for somebody like myself

43:17 Eliott Glinn myself who's I'm not a coach I'm not a you know a manager or anything like that I'm a mix engineer And if I can help the artists that I work with make better music,

43:28 Luke F. Walton it'll Yep.

43:28 Eliott Glinn make my job easier.

43:29 Luke F. Walton Mm-hmm.

43:30 Eliott Glinn The music will do better and go further. So that's kind of the idea of where it came from. And I've just actually fallen in love with the process of doing it,

43:37 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

43:37 Eliott Glinn the kind of feedback I get from people saying like, God, I've never thought of that. That's really helped me out with this song I was struggling on or I've never tried that technique, but I'll do it. And that really spurred me on to think. Yeah, we have this thing of the curse of knowledge where we

43:50 Luke F. Walton Mm-hmm.

43:51 Eliott Glinn know what we know and we forget that other people don't know what we know. It seems obvious to us, but there

43:55 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

43:56 Eliott Glinn is so many people who have no idea about any of this stuff and I'd like to impart the knowledge that I've shared or learned over these years with them. And so that's kind of what I do Monday to Friday. I'll post every day on Instagram, whether it's a little tip or motivation or a story, something like that to kind of help people make better music essentially.

44:15 Luke F. Walton I like it. I love that. And I also like that idea of the cursive knowledge.

44:21 Eliott Glinn Yeah.

44:22 Luke F. Walton I feel like people that are bilingual. uh that really helps you get it because you're like oh

44:29 Eliott Glinn yeah

44:29 Luke F. Walton yeah i know this is the language and then you speak it another turns like i got nothing it's like oh right yeah okay we've got different we've got different bags that's

44:36 Eliott Glinn yeah that makes

44:37 Luke F. Walton yes

44:37 Eliott Glinn so much sense i'm unfortunately not bilingual but i can totally appreciate how that you it was it called it's the dunning-kruger effect i

44:44 Luke F. Walton think yeah

44:44 Eliott Glinn isn't it yeah so you yeah people who don't know anything think they know everything and as soon as you start learning more you're like oh god there's so much stuff i don't know

44:52 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

44:52 Eliott Glinn um and so you know passing that knowledge on whatever it is it might seem stupid i i made a reel yesterday um was it yesterday or the day before about um putting a guitar into nashville tuning um

45:03 Luke F. Walton Cool. Yeah.

45:04 Eliott Glinn you know the high strung thing i'd never done it before i've always wanted to do it and so i thought let me make a little reel about it i had i don't know 20 comments from people being like i've never heard this technique before this is incredible thank you so much and then i had 20 other people going yeah yeah it's nashville tuning we know

45:18 Eliott Glinn no no it's been around for decades um so it kind of perfectly encapsulates that gap of of you know what i'm trying to fill there's obviously there's people who are like yeah i know that already it's like cool i'm not i'm not doing it for you i'm doing it for these others

45:33 Luke F. Walton Sorry to interrupt this very important broadcast, but it's time for one more advertisement for myself for this podcast. What I'm asking for is for you to rate it five stars, share it with your friends. This is like the most important thing for this podcast to grow. So if you want to do this, you go onto the podcast screen, right?

45:49 Luke F. Walton You click on the dot, dot, dot on Spotify under there. It says rate show and you go and you click it five stars. If you could do that for me, that's the best way for the algorithms and all this stuff.

46:00 Luke F. Walton stuff to share it out with the world i know that it's a lot to ask but if you could please please please just please just hit those three dots and then a five star would really help us out and helps us you know get the get the word out and spread the love of music so thank you if you're listening on youtube you know what to do like subscribe all that good stuff thank you so much and here's the rest of the episode

46:18 Eliott Glinn Yeah, Yeah I like that. It's good to shake them off to where it's like, yeah, like I get that, you know, it doesn't mean that everybody knows it. Maybe you don't learn. to learn something different seeing somebody re-approach a technique that you already know and you think you

46:30 Eliott Glinn yeah know perfectly but it's like maybe you don't maybe there's yeah a gap in your knowledge too exactly

46:35 Eliott Glinn exactly so yeah more power to everyone just share what you know and you'll you'll help people and you'll you know foster a community of like-minded people and that's kind of in this very separated social media age where again we're on the other side of the atlantic but we're able to talk to each other that's great and

46:52 Eliott Glinn and the more that we can do this and connect i think that the better the outcome for music and society in general will be um so that's kind of my what i'm trying to do in my little corner of the internet

47:02 Eliott Glinn I love it. Love it. In terms of just feeling like. Because I know that you're all about creating emotive mixes for people. How do you, with all of this that we've talked about, all the different techniques, the focus on the artist, trying to coach up artists, how do you get to that end goal? And when do you know that you're like done when you've hit that point where it's like.

47:26 Eliott Glinn this mix is speaking to me um is it just a is it an intuition thing is it the artist is there some sort of teamwork like how do you how do you get to that point where like we've completed the journey

47:37 Eliott Glinn yeah that's a really good question and i think obviously with all this stuff it differs song to song artist to artist but for me as a mix engineer kind of like how we said at the beginning when something stops jumping out at me i kind of know the mix is finished but what i used to neglect for years was like the final stage which i do a lot now a hell of a lot of it is the final automation riding with my my faders here so the mix might be technically perfect and done like you

48:03 Eliott Glinn like things sound balanced things sound great but then i'll go through kind of track by track things that need it and i'll just push the fader ride it at certain points and pull it back at certain points and and that's where i feel like i'm able to get the emotion back into things and

48:17 Eliott Glinn Oh, the way i try and think about like i'm i've stopped being a technician and i start being an artist again at that point where i'm i'm playing the board you know i'm playing the music and just pushing and pulling and it's something again that the guys have

48:30 Eliott Glinn you know engineers have been doing for decades and they used to do on the on the old consoles and again we've got the ease of doing it now on these these fader banks that we've got um

48:39 Eliott Glinn yeah that's how i really feel like i'm able to put my emotion and and put those scene changes in and really push and pull things at the right point um and it's something i encourage everyone to try and do i know it seems like such a oh it's another step i've got to do in the whole process but i think you take your mix from being good to great by doing that so that's kind of yeah how i push push the emotion into things

49:01 Luke F. Walton I love that. And I have one last question for you. This is the question I like to ask every guest.

49:06 Luke F. Walton guest to kind of close this out it's a big one so this show is called love music more the segment's called love music why and that's my question to you why do you keep doing it why do you love it what is it about this thing just from that super zoomed out perspective that continues to excite you

49:24 Eliott Glinn That is a great question. it's hard to pinpoint one thing exactly but i'm i'm just so excited to wake up every day and come in and do it there's you know i think we all have days where we feel a bit down or we're a little bit ill or you know and and maybe we're not working on the project that we particularly resonate with so much and that can happen but

49:46 Eliott Glinn 99% of the time I wake up super excited to come in here um yeah I wake up and I'll make my coffee and I'll come straight into work I used to kind of when I worked in a in a school before years ago I used to wake up and read and just try and start my day as slow as possible um because I didn't want to get to work whereas now I'm like I want to dive in and get with it but again it's also just been something that's been with me um since I was a kid my dad was extremely he doesn't play any instruments but he just listens

50:13 Eliott Glinn since to the widest array of artists and musicians i've ever heard you know he loves everything um and he was constantly showing me things and my older brother as well was the same and he he played music and and so just it's something i've always loved and i think anyone would have told you from the age of probably eight or ten that i would do something with music because i wasn't very good at much else but like this is where something for whatever reason things resonate with me

50:39 Eliott Glinn And I'm able to actually earn a living doing it, which is, again, the biggest blessing in the world. So yeah, that's kind of, that's why I do it.

50:47 Luke F. Walton Love it. So Eliott, where can people hire

50:49 Luke F. Walton you? Where can they get in touch? Where can

50:51 Luke F. Walton they ask you questions?

50:54 Eliott Glinn yeah absolutely so the best place is probably my instagram so eliott glinn audio eliott is a funny spelling it's e-l-i-o-t-t glinn g-l-i-n-n audio and then that's the same as my website eliottglinnaudio.com you can check out my work there's a contact form on there but yeah just come say hey on instagram shoot me a dm i'd love to chat again i'm all about the community and and meeting like-minded people and whether we work together or not i'd love to hear um people's music and and if they need help with mixing tips things like that i'm

51:23 Eliott Glinn that i'm always always available to offer my time yeah Love it. And I'll definitely throw that in the show description as well so people can just easily click on that. But just in case you're driving to work or something like that, keep that in mind and go follow

51:36 Eliott Glinn brilliant my guy on Instagram. thank you so much for having me on man i really appreciate it's been it's been an awesome conversation and um yeah i hope your listeners have got something something from this

51:45 Eliott Glinn Totally agree. Really, really appreciate you taking the time and we'll stay in touch.

51:50 Eliott Glinn Brilliant. Thanks, buddy. Thank you.